GREECE’S Syriza government has drawn up its plan to renegotiate with the EU.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras won a confidence vote on Tuesday evening, with the backing of his coalition partner, the right-wing ANEL party.
Tsipras’ government had the support of 162 deputies in the 300-seat parliament, 149 from Syriza and 13 from its ANEL right-wing partner, while 137 deputies voted against it.
ANEL holds five Ministerial seats in the new cabinet with Panos Kammenos, the leader of ANEL, taking over the helm of the important Defence Ministry.
The new Ministry of Interior which merged with the Ministry of Administrative Reform and Public Order will be headed by Syriza MP Nikos Voutsis.
All 137 MPs in the opposition, New Democracy, Golden Dawn fascists, Potami, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and PASOK voted against the government’s policy statements, with the exception of Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos who was absent.
The Secretary General of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), Dimitris Koutsoubas, refused to take up the invitation to support the new government’s anti-troika stance.
The Syriza-led coalition government intends to ‘renegotiate’ the bail-out loan terms with the EU and IMF and to achieve an agreement for economic growth starting with an initial ‘bridge’ plan of financial support. Then discussions ‘could be held in the next few months to secure an agreement with the EU for the next 3-4 years’.
The German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has meanwhile insisted Greece will not be allowed to renege on the bailout conditions.
Tsipras said before the vote of confidence: ‘I want to repeat today, no matter how much Schaeuble asks it, we are not going to ask to extend the bailout.’
Syriza rejects the ‘troika’ team – the EC, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) – that is overseeing the implementation of the 240bn (£182bn) bailout.
Greece’s debt currently stands at more than 320bn euros (£237bn) – about 174% of its economic output (GDP).
The EU-IMF bailout for debt-laden Greece expires on 28 February and Athens will not extend it.
In the situation of a worldwide crisis and collapse of capitalism, there will not be any agreement with the EU and IMF imperialists that will be beneficial for Greek workers and youth. The EU and IMF only care for the survival of the banks and capitalism.
Greek workers and youth already reject the Troika’s plans to keep Greece on its knees and ruin it to pay for the crisis of the bankers and the bosses.
The EU intends to keep the Greek workers on their knees, and even make an example of them, lest the Syriza eruption, from a small group to government, become contagious, and spreads throughout the EU.
There is a huge euro-wide shock ahead, political, economic, and financial, when this is made crystal clear in the coming days, and the EU attempts to do in Greece what it did in the Ukraine, organise its political supporters, plus the fascists, this time Golden Dawn, along with sections of the military and the police, to carry out its own coup.
Greek workers must now organise independently of the Syriza lefts.
Workers must form Councils of Action throughout Greece to demand that the mountain of debt with the EU be abolished, and that the National Bank and all Greek banks be nationalised along with all of the major industries and put under workers’ management.
Councils of Action must demand that the riot police are disbanded and that the army officer corps is sacked and replaced by soldiers’ committees.
Greece must quit the EU and the working class must be prepared to take the power and establish a workers’ and small farmers’ government that will draw up a national economic plan to provide jobs and a future for all workers and youth.
Workers throughout the EU will follow the Greek example and bring down their own austerity governments. They will also respond favourably to the demand to bring down the EU, and replace it with the Socialist United States of Europe.
